a ticking of clocks
by intrajanelle
Summary: It's been a week since New Year's Eve and Artemis is dreaming of a life with a boy named Wally West, a life with college and a dog and a place of their own, a life that scares her considering she's never met him in her entire life.
1. Chapter 1

_a/n: i've been so busy with school i haven't been on here in forever, wow. but here have a little something i've been cooking up. there will be four long chapters, a little bit of smut in chapter 3 and swears for the M rating. enjoy._

_disclaimer: still do not own yj, unfortunately. _

* * *

_a ticking of clocks_

_by intrajanelle_

* * *

_five years in the future_

Artemis was the last one standing, which wasn't saying much. Her crossbow had been thrown across the room, Deathstroke had her hands twisted behind her back and before she could react her mask was ripped from her face. It clattered to her feet as her long black hair fell across her eyes.

Sportsmaster stepped closer and Deathstroke lifted her up a bit, off her feet, into her father's line of vision. He leaned down, his eyes narrowing as he reached toward her.

Somewhere in the back of the room Wally was making this whimpering sound that Artemis would recognize anywhere. It was the sound he made when their printer had run out of ink at two am the day before his Vietnamese Lit paper was due, it was the sound he made when Nelson had gotten sick and had to be taken to the vet, and it was the sound he made whenever Artemis was in danger.

"Tigress," Sportsmaster whispered, tearing the amulet from Artemis' neck. As her black hair shifted to gold and stretched past her shoulders, as her black eyes flashed gray and a darker pigment seeped into her pale skin her father's eyes tapered shut and he sighed, heavily, as if the world was suddenly lost from his shoulders.

The amulet fell from his hand and shattered on the floor of the Watchtower, sending shards skittering across the room.

"I thought you were dead," her father said softly, and then louder, "I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD."

Artemis didn't respond, instead she glanced behind her, past the wide eyes of her former teammates, past Nightwing thrashing in Black Beetle's arms and past Kaldur's figure still and cold under the heel of his father's boot. Instead she focused on Wally's eyes. He was sprawled across the floor, his eyebrows knit in worry, his hands reaching toward her uselessly as three Kroloteans sat on his back, pinning him to the floor, one of them pulled at his curls and jabbed him in the cheek with a single, green finger but Wally didn't seem to notice.

"It'll be okay," Artemis hoped he could read from the tightness of her eyes, "It'll be fine."

There was still the button in her right hand, the one Kaldur had handed her hours earlier. "You'll know when to use it," he had said, "you'll know better than any of us when the time is right." And now Kaldur was strewn across the floor and her teammates were wounded and gasping and Wally was giving her that look that he always did just before she did something stupid and Artemis was sure this was the moment Kal had been talking about.

"How could you do this to your MOTHER?" Sportsmaster was demanding, grabbing a hunk of her hair and pulling her out of Deathstroke's grasp.

"Didn't know you cared," Artemis wheezed, her hand finally free. She shoved the button in her father's face so she could see the fear in his eyes before she pressed it. "Doesn't matter now, anyway. It's a thing of the past."

"No," Wally shouted and it was last thing she heard before everything went startlingly white.

*

_present day_

Artemis sits on her bed, her hair is tied out of her face in a long ponytail, her arrows are laid out before her, and her fingers graze the edges of their shafts.

In the room next to hers her parents are arguing, her mother's voice seeping through the thin walls, words slung through the thick air being Vietnamese and English and everything in between.

"Hãy ra khỏi ngôi nhà này. Bây giờ," Paula yells, and heavy footsteps can be heard in the hall as her father stomps from the room, "Leave our daughter alone, Lawrence. Leave one of our daughters alone."

There's a loud bang as something crashes into the wall outside her door and Lawrence hisses, "Shit."

"Từ đó," Paula says and Lawrence yells back, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE SAYING WOMAN," before Artemis' bedroom door crashes open.

"Art, pack your things, we're leaving," Lawrence says, slamming the door shut before Paula can wheel herself inside.

"You're not taking her!" Paula screams, banging on the door with both fists, "Not Artemis, not my baby. Lawrence, bạn quái vật."

"Your mom isn't exactly keen on our training baby girl, seems we gotta ditch this place. Now quickly," her father says, locking the door with a twist of the knob and dashing to the window.

Artemis slides her emergency bag from behind her headboard, rolls up her arrows and straps them to her back before meeting her father by the window ledge. She glances back at the door, it's still vibrating under the force of Paula's fists and she can hear her mother sobbing now, deep throaty wails that echo through the walls, shaking Artemis to her bones.

"I'm staying," Artemis says, staring at the doorway, "I have to stay for mom I-"

"Not an option," Lawrence says, grabbing her waist and pulling her against him. The last thing she sees before he shoots his grappling hook onto the roof across the street and pulls her into the night sky is the door of her bedroom bursting open and her mother's wide, puffy eyes following her out the window.

*

"It's probably best if you just stay here," Cheshire teases, her voice lilting and gentle and sending red sparks of anger floating across Artemis' vision.

"No," Artemis says, pulling her bow off her belt and hefting it in front of herself, "I'm coming with you, I'm ready."

"If you insist," Cheshire shrugs, planting her mask on her face and jumping lithely from the helicopter, her limbs splayed out to catch the wind.

Artemis growls in frustration and jumps after her, the sky swirling around her as she cart wheels through the air and lands on all fours on the roof of Happy Harbor High School without a sound.

"You've improved," Cheshire admits; her gaze focused on the air vent as she unscrewed the ventilation cover.

"I know," Artemis says, pulling it from its hinges once all the screws are lying at their feet.

They crawl on all fours through the shaft, peering inside the room below intermittently to see a small group of teens huddled around their target: Dr. Serling Roquette. They are all silent, although the gestures thrown between them suggest they are having a lengthy conversation. One of the boys, his only feature visible from the vent his red curls flopping over his cowl, chews incessantly on a granola bar and seems to be gesturing wildly at an Atlantean boy standing in the corner — or at least Artemis is fairly sure he is Atlantean, considering the tattoos lining his limbs and the water bearers strapped to his shoulder blades.

"Kid. Shut up," the boy Artemis recognizes as Robin shouts aloud, jumping from his position against the wall. "We are all trying to get through this mission with any slip-up's and you're hardly helping. Considering you shouldn't even be here you should stop picking fights with Dr. Roquette."

The boy with the red curls groans skyward and suddenly Artemis can see his face. If it hadn't been for the black uniform Artemis would have recognized him instantly, it's Kid Flash. The boy that is always on the news flirting with reporters and woman he'd rescued and any girl with a pulse; the boy with the curly red hair and bright yellow uniform and impossibly crooked grin.

"Ouch," Kid Flash groans as he grasps his right arm, and it's only then that she recognizes it's in a thick white cast. The boy throws one last glance around the room at his teammates before saying, "fine, how about I just help Miss M and Supey patrol the perimeter."

"Good idea," the Atlantean seems to say with a firm nod and in an instant Kid Flash is nowhere to be seen.

"Time to go to work," Cheshire says, her voice lilting upward as if she's a kid at a playground.

Three minutes, two smoke pellets and one kidnapping later Artemis sits in the back of the helicopter leaning over Roquette as Cheshire shoves a computer into the doctors hands.

"Reverse whatever those sidekicks had you do, we wouldn't want anything stopped the fog now would we?" Cheshire says, stepping around the doctor and into the cockpit.

"Great, all that work for nothing," the woman sneers, pulling the computer open with a shake of her head. "Well, at least this laptop has more RAM than that kiddie computer those sidekicks had me working on, I actually can't tell which situation I prefer."

"Just do it," Artemis says, sitting beside her as she deactivates the outside tracker on the fog.

"There, all sorted, now what would you like me to do? Undo it all over again? For old times sake?"

Artemis yanks the laptop from her and growls something incoherent, but before Roquette can ask her to speak up an arrow slices through the door to the helicopter and jerks it open.

Artemis jumps aside as a tall boy with muscular upper arms and a scowl leaps aboard. He takes one glance around the cockpit, pulls Roquette to his side, wraps an arm around her waist and launches himself from the helicopter again before Artemis can even react.

"Mmm, now who in the world was that?" Cheshire moans from the door to the cockpit, before laying eyes on her sister. "Did Roquette perform her task?"

Artemis nods and crawls to the open door of the helicopter where air threatens to pull her into the dank night sky if she isn't careful. She leans over the edge and peers at the building below.

Or she would if there was a building below. Just as she's adjusts her vision Wayne Enterprises falls to the ground in a puff of smoke, an ash cloud filtering into the sky. She ignores the dust and instead narrows her eyes at the parking lot where a foreign red ship is setting down.

The sidekicks run from the ship, Kid Flash a blur in front of them, Robin practically invisible in his ochre cape, the others following along slowly, in shock as they reach the perimeter of the building and look up at the ruins. They're too late.

"Hey babe," a familiar voice coos and lazy circles are drawn on her skin as someone breathes in her ear, "Artemis, Artemis I love you. I really really love you."

She's saying, "I really love you too, dork," but she doesn't even recognize her own voice and then she turning around and her whole world is green eyes and a splatter of freckles and a smile so crooked she could die.

Her heart does one of those silly little leaps in her chest and she's falling into that smile, falling so fast and hard and intimately and then they're kissing and Artemis doesn't even know how she knows how to kiss this well, because the last time she checked the only boy she's kissed is Cameron Mahkent, once, in the seventh grade.

And then there's an alarm and she really is falling, off her bed at the Shadows base and she's alone and there's no boy with green eyes and freckles who can kiss her like he's been doing it every day for years and years and she finds it ridiculous that she wants to cry but there are tears pouring down her cheeks. A few minutes later when she is standing over the sink splashing water on her flushed skin she can't remember why she'd been so sad earlier.

It was just a dream, and the fact that she's standing in front of the mirror wearing her first official shadows uniform and pulling her mask over her face that is reality.

She doesn't look half bad either. For some reason Crock women make good cats.

*

It's been a month since she's seen her mom.

It's October. Gotham is always so much quieter in October, at least during the day. It's as if all the loonies come out when the sun goes down and save their strength during normal waking hours. But it doesn't matter, because it's ten in the morning and her father won't be looking for her to commit grand theft until at least after midnight. She has a few hours.

She steals Jade's motorcycle.

*

Whatever possessed her to sneak off the Gotham clearly should have possessed her to bring a sweater, because it's freezing. She breathes into her hands and then rubs them together, her teeth chattering as her thin, ¾ sleeved leather jacket, while stylish, fails her in the practical department.

She's left her motorcycle a few blocks back, parked behind a shed where she knows no one will see it. She can't exactly walk it to her house seeing as her mother had been trained in engineering as a teenager and she knows the sound the single cylinder engine Jade has in her vehicle made by heart, she'd practically built it, she'd know Artemis was there in no time at all; although Artemis is regretting her decision to park it so far away.

There is a crowd of neighborhood drug dealers clumped outside Marty's TV World, an old fashioned television outlet where the old man Marty has several TVs in the windows displaying the local news. Artemis has always thought this was stupid seeing that they live in Gotham and all an aspiring robber would have to do would be throw a rock through one of those front windows, grab a TV and they'd be halfway across the city before even Batman could catch them. But perhaps what is even stranger than Marty's unorthodox methods is the fact that the dealers in out front aren't even dealing, they are staring at the TVs, mouths ajar.

Artemis pushes past them, ignoring the grunts and passes as she locks eyes on one of the screens.

It seems Robin has a new friend in the Flash's mentor, Flash Boy, the subtitles scroll along the bottom of the screen, the two bested the Penguin and a dozen of his accomplices just this morning and-

Artemis rolls her eyes, shoves her hands into the so-called pockets of her jacket (and really why are they even allowed to be called pockets? They are miniscule) and makes her down the street, towards her old apartment.

She doesn't have time for Kid Flash or Bird Boy, she has to see her mother before Sportsmaster realizes she was missing and sends a platoon of assassins to collect her.

And without any warning she's standing across the street from the old brownstone. The TV is on in the living room, Artemis can see the flashes from the window. Her mother must be home, watching Vietnamese drama, eating pho, hanging her laundry on the drying racks in the kitchen, alone. Completely alone.

She should go up, take the elevator just to prove the super fixed it, to calm her fear that her paraplegic mother has to haul herself up four flights of stairs every day. She could knock on the door and hug her mom and they wouldn't have to say anything at all, they could just hold each other and maybe she'd give her some leftover noodles and they'd drink tea and talk about how Artemis is getting an 'A-' in archery class back at the Shadows base because Sportsmaster doesn't believe in perfection. But she never could. If she went back now she'd just be putting her mom in danger. She'd be hurting the one person she so desperately wants to protect.

She takes a step forward, maybe to just get a closer look, see if she can make out the top of her mom's head from here but she stops herself as her eyes wander from the living room window; and then she is running down the street, forcing tears down by squeezing her eyes shut and she wants to scream. She wants to tear her father's throat out, but she just runs, because no matter what she does now she can't change the fact that her bedroom window is still open.

She runs right into someone's chest, someone's hard, skinny chest and she reels backward scraping the tears from her eyes.

"Why hello there, beautiful," a voice boasts, and it's a familiar voice, like something she'd heard once years ago or in a dream.

She looks up at the boy, he's about her height and undoubtedly muscular but wearing ridiculously baggy clothing. His hair is a mess and his smile is crooked and his eyes are warm and green and he's wearing a cast.

She backs away.

"Oh, no, no it's okay. I'm sorry, I'm Wally West, sorry about bumping into you like that," the boy says, reaching his good hand toward her as if he expects her to shake it.

She doesn't move and he lowers the hand and says, "you don't have a concussion do you? I've been told my pecs are pretty hard but I've never given a girl brain damage upon immediate collision before."

"You're not from around here are you?" she says, because she can't imagine anyone from Gotham starting a conversation with someone they'd just bumped into that didn't involve the words 'fuck you'.

"No," the boy laughs, "you can tell? I'm- ah, visiting a friend. I'm from Central City."

"Central City? Your friend isn't very smart letting you wander around by yourself. You'd probably walk right up to the Joker and ask for his autograph."

"I'll have you know the Joker would beg to give me his autograph, I'm quite the debonaire," the boy says as he flashes her a grin.

"Oh are you?"

"I am, and I'll prove it. Why don't you show me around?" the boy says, leaning closer, his eyes wide and hopeful. "Since you seem to be the expert on Gotham and all."

"I-" Artemis says, glancing just down the street. There's Jade's motorcycle, or there's the shed it's hidden behind so well she can't even make out the rearview mirrors. She should go, she should because Sportsmaster is going to storm into her room any second now hoping to get in some training; and he'll probably teach her the three best ways to slice a man's jugular and she'll have to pretend how enlightened and happy she is that she now knows a couple hundred ways to kill a man; and she'll have to hide the fact that she's dying inside because her mother's been sitting in that empty house every day for a month expecting her daughter to come home. "Fine, but only because if I just leave you here unattended you might end up on the evening news: IGNORANT TOURIST SLAUGHTERED BY NINE YEAR OLDS, quite tragic."

"I knew you'd come around," the boy grins and follows beside her as she storms down the street. It's funny, no matter how quickly she walks he keeps pace, walking as lightly as if he's floating on air. "I'm Wally by the way, Wally West."

"Artemis C-" Artemis tenses, she hadn't meant to give him her real name dammit, but now she's stuck with Artemis and he's staring at her wide-eyed as if he's never walked with a girl that wasn't his own mother before and she sighs, "Artemis Nguyen, nice to meet you."


	2. Chapter 2

_a/n: sorry this took so long, i am writing the third part as we speak so hopefully a faster update this time. the M rating won't apply until the next chapter so. :D_

_disclaimer: still do not own yj, unfortunately. _

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chapter 2:

"So tell me, Artemis," Wally says as they walk down the street. "Where are we headed?"

Artemis can't remember why she agreed to this because it feels awkward and wrong and her hands are twitching and Wally hasn't stopped yammering for fifteen minutes.

"You wanted a tour? I'm taking you someplace where a tour might not imply being shot in the temple," Artemis says.

"Aw, c'mon, I can handle it. Take me around your side of town, all your hangouts, in fact I have a bright idea. How about you take us to your favorite diner? I'm starved," Wally says, placing a mournful hand over his stomach.

"I don't have any money."

"It's on me."

"That's really not necessary," Artemis says, narrowing her eyes.

"I know, but how many times am I going to be able to buy lunch for a mysterious, hot-tempered, beautiful girl?" Wally says, a grin splitting his face in half and Artemis sighs, her shoulders slumping forward.

"Fine, but don't describe me in banal adjectives again or I will lead you to the darkest corner of the city and leave you there," Artemis says, stomping ahead of him, her feet carrying her toward the scent of pancakes and bacon wafting from a diner across the street.

She's been here once before and she glances subconsciously at the booth in the back, hidden behind a low wall and tucked into the warped metal interior of the diner. She remembers sitting there by the window, she remembers watching people walk past, hurrying to families and jobs and lives and she remembers her dad buying her a slice of apple pie.

She doesn't like pie, doesn't like apples, but she'd eaten that entire slice with the rigor of someone who hasn't been spoiled a single moment in their entire life.

"Your mother isn't coming home for awhile," her father had said and Jade had lifted her chin from her palm and said, "What did you do."

"You alright?" Wally asks. Artemis shakes her head and looks over at him, his eyes are narrowed in concern. "We can go to another diner."

"No, this is fine," she says, sliding into a booth far away from the corner. The waitress ambles over and Artemis orders a tea, Wally a coffee and the woman disappears into the kitchen. The diner is suspiciously empty, but for the two of them and an elderly man at the counter, hunched over a side of hash browns.

"So, what makes this diner your favorite?" Wally asks, and Artemis can see his eyes lingering too long on the water stains on the ceiling and the rusty stools and the cashier smoking a cigarette behind her hand as is to stifle the nicotine with her fingers.

"It isn't, It was just closest," Artemis says and there's apple pie behind the counter and she feels like she might be sick.

"Tea, coffee, now what can I get for ya," the waitress asks without pulling a notepad and Wally doesn't hesitate before he's ordering half the menu.

"Full stack of pancakes, french toast, bacon, hash browns, a cheese omelet-" Wally wavers, staring down at the menu, "and a slice of apple pie."

"And for you hun?" the waitress asks, turning to Artemis as if memorizing an order like that and having teenage boys eat more than someone on the brink of liposuction was entirely normal.

"Eggs, over-easy, thanks," Artemis says, handing over her menu and turning to Wally with a raised eyebrow.

"I'm hungry," he shrugs, "I have money, don't worry about it. So tell me about yourself."

"I have a better idea, why don't you tell me about _yourself_ and then I'll talk," Artemis says and for a moment she thinks he might protest, in fact she's prepared for him to protest, already has the retort on the top of her tongue as Wally launches into a story about his grandeur lifestyle.

"I don't have many friends at school," Wally admits and Artemis is almost surprised by his brutal honesty, almost, but he's also incredibly familiar, his face, his freckles, his hands, his eyes, his voice, everything he says and does so intimately etched into her brain, somehow. She isn't surprised by what he says next, she isn't surprised by him at all. "I do have- well after school activities, I have good friends there. There's one guy named Rob, he's my best friend, he's the one I was visiting today. Then there's Meg and S- Conner and Kal and sometimes Roy. We save people- well I mean-"

"So, what, you're like volunteers?" Artemis asks, sipping her tea.

"Exactly!" Wally says, "and my uncle and my other friends- _mentors_, they watch over us, make sure we're doing our jobs right."

"Sounds fun," Artemis says, idly stirring sugar into her tea.

"It's the best time of my life," Wally says, his voice slipping into an ecstatic drawl. "I mean, I get to hang with my best friends and help people. What more could I ask for."

"World peace," Artemis says and Wally scoffs just before the waitress sets the feast down at their table.

As Artemis picks at her eggs Wally digs into his food with rapture, smearing chunks of pancakes with butter and bacon and syrup and stuffing the morsels into his mouth.

"I'm not grossing you out am I? I would slow down but I'm starving," Wally says with his mouth full, licking a bit of stray syrup from his chin.

"I've seen worse than a teenage boy mauling a short-stack, go right ahead," Artemis says, cutting her eggs into tiny cubes and eating them slowly. Normally she'd eat more but today she isn't feeling particularly famished, she musters just enough hunger to finish her eggs and Wally eats her toast while she finishes her tea.

They talk a bit more and its light conversation about Wally's mom and dad and friends and family and acquaintances and 'after-school activities'. He never asks her about herself until one point when they're waiting for the waitress to bring their change from the bill and Wally says, "How about you?"

"What about me?" Artemis asks, staring at the linoleum and her fingers as they dance along the flower patterned countertop.

"Nothing," Wally says lightly, "take your time," and its probably the most considerate thing that's ever been been said to her.

They're leaving when Artemis sees her, standing across the street with her baseball cap pulled over her eyes, the only part of her face visible a wide smile stretching across her cheeks.

"Shit," Artemis says, pushing Wally back into the diner.

"What the heck, injured man here," Wally says, waving his cast in the air.

"Back entrance," Artemis says, and when Wally's eyes widen and his hands freeze mid-wave she enunciates, "_now_."

She's surprised by how quickly he sobers to the situation, he follows her without a word, without a question, swiftly and silently into the alley and only when they're outside, Gotham looming in a thin strip of smog and gloom over the alley, does he ask, "What now?"

"Now you come with me."

Artemis isn't surprised to see Jade standing among the shadows, but how she's changed into Cheshire so quickly is unexpected. Artemis grabs Wally's cast and pulls him behind her, he yelps and she whispers, "run," just as Cheshire lunges toward them.

"That was a beautiful escape you pulled, Artemis. Too bad you didn't cover your tracks very well, don't worry once we're back at base I'll teach you some escape tactics that should work better than covering my bike in a tarp behind a shed," Cheshire says, twirling her sai in her fingers.

"Artemis-"

"I told you to run!" Artemis says, pulling her collapsible crossbow from her jacket and aiming an arrow at her sister's head.

"Woah, watch where you point those things," Wally says, still standing a few feet away, hopping from foot to foot as if he is straining every reflex he has not to run.

"I know what I'm doing," Artemis says, following Cheshire with the tip of her arrow like a pointer.

"Apparently so," Wally says, "now it's none of business but any reason a wanted assassin wants to take you 'back to base'?"

"I see a fondness for red-heads runs in the family," Jade says as she lunges and Artemis shoots for her chest and catches her shoulder. Jade hisses and pulls the protruding arrow out without another sound, it clatters to the cement, blood seeping from the open wound. "You know, I was going to leave red alone. He's kind of cute, but now I think I'll just kill him. Save dad the trouble."

"You don't like saving dad anything," Artemis says as Jade crouches, aiming her sai for Wally's forehead. "Wally, run."

"But-"

"Just. Run," Artemis says, pushing him further away. "Trust me, I've got this."

Most boys would do as she said, turn around and run as fast and as far as they could without ever turning around. Artemis has a feeling that Wally West is an entirely different species of boy because he seems to constantly upend her expectations. Instead of running, as she'd begged him to do a dozen times, he scoops her into his arms and pulls her to his chest.

"Hold on to your arrows beautiful," he says and _then_ he runs.

Artemis wasn't expecting him to run at the speed of light or anything but when he's jogging down the alley, as slow as a lame donkey with Cheshire staring after them for the thirty seconds or so it took for him to run into the street, Artemis was beginning to feel just a tad ridiculous. There were people staring but Wally's hands were tight around her and she didn't feel like twisting out of his grasp and possibly re-breaking his arm, so she waits until he's halfway down the block, ducking into another alley and setting her down before she retaliates.

"Ouch," Wally says, holding his temple where a bright red strip of flesh was pulsing. "You do realize that thing is for shooting not hitting," he says, gesturing to her crossbow.

"Why didn't you run?"

"I wasn't going to leave you with Cheshire."

"How did you know-"

"I watch the news."

Artemis glances down the street. _Speaking of Cheshire_, but she hadn't followed them. This meant one of two things, either Wally's slower-than-death getaway had managed to reduce to such a state of shock that they'd lost her or she was toying with them, lulling them into a false sense of security before she struck again. Artemis was betting on the second one, just because.

"What's this about your dad killing me?" Wally says.

Artemis looks at him, hands shoved in her pockets, hair loose around her shoulders. His arm is still broken and casted so she can't understand how he'd carried her and he's not even winded. His hair has been tossed from his face by the wind and his eyes are open and his voice is familiar.

"It's nothing, I was confused with this old movie I saw the other day about this ninja girl whose ninja dad has it it out for her ninja boyfriend-"

"So I'm your ninja boyfriend?" Wally says, sidling closer and he's too close, the alley's too small, everything's moving too fast and Artemis places her hands on Wally's chest and pushes him lightly.

"No, I- I have to go," she says, her hands lingering on his chest and then she steps away and walks slowly down the alley, her feet dragging on the damp cement. If she leaves, Cheshire won't bother Wally, at least not for the moment. He'll have time to get away, to go back to Central City, to forget this ever happened.

"Can I at least get a number?" Wally calls.

"Don't have a cell phone."

"Email?"

"No computer."

"How about a bat-signal?" Wally suggests, and he's following her, his feet stepping with hers as if he is physically incapable of leaving her be. "What should I do, shine a giant arrow over Gotham, would that do it?"

Artemis doesn't turn around but she stops walking and stares down at her feet, her hands ball into fists in her pockets and in that moment she hates her father more than she has in her entire life, more than the time he used her stuffed animals for target practice, more than that time he beat her half to death in a training exercise, more than when he paralyzed her mother and got her sent to jail for six years.

"Meet me here, one week from now at eight am," Artemis says.

"Sooo, is this a date?" Wally says, his lips dangerously close to her ear.

"If you want it to be," Artemis says, shrugging her shoulders and trudging down the rest of the alley. In the street she tries to pretend she can't hear Wally whoop and whisper, "Yes!"

"Yes, souvenir!" a voice shouts in her mind, almost as if Wally's exclamation activated a long forgotten memory.

Artemis falters and reaches a hand toward the street sign in front of her. She grasps the pole, her breath heavy as a voice tears through her thoughts as if its been physically dragged from the back of her subconscious.

"Who are you?! Still not giving her the satisfaction. You gave me mouth-to-mouth. So-o I'm your ninja boyfriend-? Artemis, not to me. Ok?"

"Artemis?" a voice says and its familiar but smaller and theres a hand on the small of her back and another on her shoulder and she looks to see Wally standing over her, his brow crinkled, his freckles poking from his skin in the afternoon sunlight.

His freckles look strange, young, she can see his face without the freckles, a face that's larger and sharper and kinder and devoid of blemishes more- more intimate and she shakes her head. As she does his freckles come back into focus one by one as if stars poking out of their hideaways at twilight.

"Artemis?"

"Yeah," Artemis says and then she takes a deep breath and steps away, "Yeah yeah I'm fine."

"You sure?" Wally asks, and he has that look directed at her, a look that says she's some helpless little girl, something that needs to be protected. Artemis hates that look.

"I'm sure," Artemis says, stepping away and Wally's hands fall to his sides without argument. "See you later Baywatch."

"Baywatch?" Wally asks, scrunching his nose and Artemis reels.

"Nevermind, nevermind," she says and then she's running, her legs carrying her down the block and around the corner and halfway to Jade's motorcycle before she even understand what she's doing.

It's too late to deny that there's something very very wrong with her, she's bumped her head or something. She's going crazy, seeing glimpses of a life that never was; and she's starting to doubt the probability that Wally will show next Sunday.

* * *

_please review :3_


End file.
